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Steve Andrews

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Hi Although it is "okay" I feel my recent painting lacks a certain something. I know my general painting skills could be improved but any suggestions please to give the painting a bit more impact? Thanks
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Alan Green

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It's a decent picture. I took a while to get my head around shadows needing to be seriously dark, and for the side of an object that was facing away from the light needed to be several shades darker than the side facing towards the light. Don't be afraid to really attack the dark side.

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by alang23

With Sarah, Phil, Ellen, Rose the dentist, and the granddaughter whose name I forget.

Robert Jones, NAPA

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Agree with the others - cars are fine, indeed better than fine, but that background is fighting with them: it's too vivid a green and too much the same tone as the cars: it can help to view an image in greyscale, if you have the facility to do that - it would show up the lack of tonal contrast. You could re-paint the background, to tone it down; or glaze over it; or scumble over it .... glazing being the application of transparent, darker colour over an underlying base, scumbling being generally roughing in a light tone over a darker.
With Sarah, Phil, Ellen, Rose the dentist, and the granddaughter whose name I forget.

Robert Jones, NAPA

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I don't think it would take much to knock them back a bit, Steve - you always want to make your background recessive, a secondary feature, if you're aiming to make the foreground pop out. When working on fine detail, as you have been, it's so easy to forget this - but every element of a painting needs to be carefully considered if the thing's going to work as a whole. By the way, what have you used as your medium here - gouache, acrylic? Not oil, I think? It would help a little bit to know that, in terms of offering practical advice - sorry if it should be obvious to me,but I'm not in my first youth, I fear! And I miss things. (Mind you. Sylvia Evans isn't in hers, either - but she still manages not to miss things....) Incidentally, Alang23 offered advice which we've passed over a bit - on shadows, darks; I think this was sound, and comes back to the same tonal contrast issue - if you can, look out a video by Ray Campbell-Smith; he's a watercolourist (I hope he's still with us, I've not heard of him for a while) and is very interesting on tonal contrast - it's so important in a painting: no matter how great individual details may be, without that contrast the painting will always read a little unconvincingly at best.

Anth Knight

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Much better Steve, no doubt about it. I think the main thing now is, as has been mentioned in previous posts, contrast - the bodywork of both cars is effectively the same tone all over, which 'flattens' the cars. Some stronger highlights and deeper shadow areas would bring this alive.